Särmä Finnish M36 Field Cap, Cotton

Do you like the Finnish M36 field cap but would like to have thinner fabric for hot weather? Lucky for you, we made the same cap now in cotton. Very stylish, soft, and literally cool summer hat. This is a limited 20th anniversary edition, so get yours fast before some tall handsome stranger from the north buys them all.

A little bit of history

The Finnish "verikauha" (= blood ladle, no one really knows where the name comes from) is as old as Finland itself. This style of caps were first widely issued in the First World War to German and Austro-Hungarian mountain troops. The design was brought to Finland in 1918 by Finnish Jaegers returning from training in Germany. From there on it was the go-to field cap design for "White" troops during the Finnish Civil War.

After the Civil War, the "verikauha" became the official piece of headwear for Finnish troops. It was used throughout WW2 up to the 21st century with a number of different variants evolving throughout the decades.

Features

The M36 cap is absolutely fantabulous in almost everything but because of the thick wool, it isn’t the ideal summer hat. To commemorate our 20th b-day, we now made this summer version from a thinner fabric. This looks a lot like the WWII era "Lotta cap", which we also made eons ago. (Lotta Svärd was the Finnish women’s voluntary civil defense organization during WWII.) However, the buttoned flaps on the front are the same way round as on the M36 field cap and thus they are the wrong way round in comparison to the original lotta cap.

Materials

We wanted a similar fabric as the one used in the Finnish army M36 summer tunic. It is of course impossible to get the original stuff but we managed to go pretty close to the look and feel by having our own fabric made in the UK. By the way, the same fabric was used in the summer tunics of the latest Unknown Soldier film, which you should see if you haven’t. Watch the original, too. The main material is 70% cotton and 30% viscose. Lining is made from 100% cotton (150g/m².

Size info

These are in European hat sizes, which is the circumference of the head in centimeters. We have also added the US size in brackets. Note that these caps are a bit stretchy. The test person with the head size 60 managed to don the caps 58-60, although 58 gave a bit of an unpleasant squeeze. So, going with your own size is fine but if you are in between, you can take the smaller.